


Losing Count

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 16:35:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4883977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(After the events of Trespasser) Solas keeps count of the days he's away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing Count

**Author's Note:**

> I don't want to downplay the fact that Solas is planning a genocide; I just wanted some fix-it fluff. Also, it was a form exercise: random numbers (hence the days and each section has an equal number of sentences).

It has been one day since he left her there, the weight of the anchor holding her in place while he took one impossible step after another in the only direction he couldn’t bear to go: away

He’d thought he was going forward, fixing the mistakes he had made. And then he thought that perhaps he was going backward, trying to restore what was too long lost. But in the end, _away_ was all that mattered—away from this world, away from his mistakes, away from his purpose. Away from the Inquisition, from his friends, from her. Away from everything that had come to matter to him in place of everything that had mattered before. Away from everything that is, he knows now, real.

But as much he cannot bear it, it is the only path before him.

 

It has been three days. Three days much like the three days he sat with a cold cloth to her feverish skin and magic skimming the mark on her palm. A setback, she’d been—unexpected in every way. A challenge, a question, an impossible thing. She had been those things and remained those things and then she had become more: strength, perseverance, an impossible woman.

Yet she had never changed, he realizes. _It was me. All along, it was me._

 

It has been ten days. It is unbearable. And he wonders if he truly cares to continue, if correcting his failure is what really drives him or if, like the Nightmare declared, it is his pride.

His name is Solas for a reason. He hopes this is not the reason.

He has thus far not allowed himself the relief of dreaming. Tonight, perhaps—but instead he sends for tea. “No sugar, no honey, no milk; leave it bitter.”

 

It has been thirty four days.

Thirty four days after he met her, after he held her hand up to a rift in desperate hope, she tripped on a stone and cursed. _Dread Wolf take me._ The Dalish—all that were left of his grand rebellion, all that were left of his people and his culture and his cause, all that were left of his devotion and the sins he committed for their freedom—they’d betrayed him in that. Falon’Din, Andruil, Dirthamen: heralded as gods, the pinnacles of The People. And he a monster to frighten their children, a name to toss at an enemy, a curse muttered when she tripped on a stone.

He was Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf. What is he now?

 

It has been seventy six days. She has long since stopped trying to approach him in the Fade, for he only retreats in fear that she will catch him, hold him fast by his tail and her hands will be his undoing. Again.

But she speaks aloud when she knows he’s there. “You can come home,” she always says.

_I’m trying to go home,_ he wants to tell her. _Don’t you see that?_

“One of us is blind,” she says.

 

It has been one hundred and one days. His people report often and very little of it is useful. He knows the men and women who made up the Inquisition and he knows her. But it seems that she knew him far better than he’d thought, far better than he’d ever expected, exactly as much as he’d always wished.

_Ar lath ma._ That had never been a lie. And she may not have known all of him, but she’d seen right through him all the same.

Today is no easier than the very first.

 

It has been two hundred and seventeen days. Where he used to spend his spare time painting frescoes on the rotunda walls, he now paints only to keep time. Four lines and one through. Four lines and one through. Four lines and one through forty three times over. But she is clever—he knew she was—and this place has been compromised.

When he is done packing what little he will take, he leaves the paint and he leaves the marks and he leaves a note.

_Well done, vhenan._

 

It has been three hundred and twenty nine days. Today, he thinks of Cole. _I can help._

“But only if we let you,” he says aloud. Maybe to no one, but maybe to Cole.

_I will restore my home. I will restore my people._

_But will it help?_

 

It has been four hundred days. His people report frequent bouts of crying, irregular sleeping patterns, a shift in diet, and hundreds of unfinished and unsent letters.

He knows that her people, when they return from his camps and hideaways and “secret” meetings, also report frequent bouts of crying, irregular sleeping patterns, a shift in diet, and hundreds of unfinished and unsent letters.

He wonders if the Iron Bull is happy now—free of the Qun and cut off from those he long thought were his people. Not Hissrad anymore, a name given by others and finally lifted from his shoulders.

And Blackwall, too, a name that he hadn’t chosen, until he had. And now himself again.

“I was Solas first,” he’d told her.

 

It has been five hundred and ninety eight days. He thinks. The marks on the walls become less and less accurate: they skew and blend together, he guesses, loses count, erases and adds and gives up.

In the end, he’d killed Mythal too. And punishment is the least of what he deserves for that.

The marks on this wall lean in every direction: south and east and forward and back. And they all, every one, point _away._

Away from what?

 

It has been too long.

It has been one day too long, just as it had been one day too long every day.

One day too long when he’d first woken up and realized rest had allowed only entropy in the wake of his fight.

One day too long when he’d stood over her bed, waiting anxiously for her to wake up in Haven, thinking only of how he’d made yet another misstep.

One day too long when he’d held her close and then pushed her away, not for the last time.

One day too long when she’d defeated Corypheus—as he’d known she would—and he’d quietly begun this final journey.

One day too long when he’d kissed her again, held her again, walked away _again._

It has been too long and he is ready to go home.


End file.
